Animal plurals/collective nouns (was Re: Re: irregularconlangs)

> Hey! That reminds me: does anyone know why English has such bizarre plurals
> and collective nouns for animals? A lot of wild animal names seem to be the
> same in the singular and plural, such as buffalo, moose, etc.

Well, game animals are regularly made in the plural with no change, even
a word like "duck" is normally used as a plural when speaking of
hunting, as in "How many duck did you get?". Apparently an analogical
leveling based on "deer" and one or two other common game animals. (A
survival in turn of the old gender system?) Besides, everyone knows
that "moose"'s plural is "meese". ;-)

> I mean things such as a pride of lions, gaggle of geese,
> etc. Some of these words are so out there as to make me think someone
> invented them to be silly, such as a memory of elephants. But how did they
> reach such currency?

Hmm, a closet conlanger making dictionaries? :-) But seriously, that's
a good question. Does this occur in many other natlangs? That is,
using odd collectives?